Words are meaningless without intent behind them.

Can call me whatever you like--it doesn't bother me. Call me something benign with the intent to be malicious and I will perceive it as malicious. Call me something that certain people for whatever reason consider malicious and yet the intent is benign and I will perceive it as benign.

I'll never quite grasp why people feel the need to be offended by words for no other reason than because they want to be offended by those words or because someone has convinced them that they should be offended by them.

It boggles my mind that people are upset by swearwords. It equally boggles my mind that calling someone a 'faggot' is perceived as hate speech if that's not the intent.

If by 'faggot' you mean that I'm a guy who's attracted to other guys and sleeps with guys then you're correct. Why would that offend me? If, however, by 'faggot' you mean that I'm a guy who's attracted to other guys and sleeps with guys and that I should be detested, reviled, looked down on, cast out, treated like shit or killed for it, then a line has been crossed.

It seems that there are people who have this patently unique capacity to differentiate between words and their intended, contextual meaning, and there are those who simply do not.

Stop giving words power over you. Stop shirking away from them. It's the difference between understanding context and knee-jerk reactionism.